Women artists and superintendents in the U.S. and around the world continue to face gender- and race-based discrimination when attempting to obtain leadership positions. In this paper, we offer a comparative case study design of a racially diverse group of three prominent women artists and six women superintendents on Long Island who were all mentored by white males and have succeeded in white, male-dominated professions. While we found many similarities between the artists and superintendents regarding how they overcame sex-role stereotyping and interpersonal racism in their respective career trajectories, we suggest that the women superintendents can learn much from the artists about how to center their gender and racial identities and transform their leadership practices in ways that would disrupt the status quo that continues to produce inequities and outcomes in schools. Indeed, women superintendents seemed to experience tensions between emulating male superintendents’ leadership styles and resisting gender stereotypes. They also must navigate a competitive culture of accountability and rankings. This competitive culture among mostly male superintendents is detrimental for women leaders who have less opportunities to seek out women mentors for advice. Our analysis provides important implications for future women superintendents aspiring to practice, what we call a “women-centric approach to culturally responsive school leadership,” or WC-CRSL.
Roda et al. (Mon,) studied this question.
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